By the way, the ladies at MOSI are about the same age as me (mid to late 30's) so they're getting to that age where they're really feeling the physical changes in their bodies. That was another reason I wanted to let them have a long weekend off. In fact, MOSI is usually open every day except Christmas, but they actually closed for Thanksgiving this year. I was pretty surprised. I started volunteering in 2008 which was two years before I became disabled, but even then it was still a physical challenge - and I don't even do the gardening part! I just tend the butterflies. But seeing as how I had a desk job, it was nice to be active and outside every Sunday, but I certainly wasn't used to a physical job.
My main job is to take care of the living creatures which pretty much means the butterflies and caterpillars (the turtles and fish take care of themselves). I'm sure I've offended people by telling them not to touch the butterflies, but tough. Once, I had a Monarch caterpillar out and I was letting kids hold it. One lady had a bunch of kids with her (children and friends, I think) and wanted me to get them each a caterpillar for them to hold so she could take a picture and I had to tell her no. I'm only one person and I don't like to have more than one caterpillar out because I can't keep my eyes on more than one. My bosses are really good about backing me up - they actually think I'm way more patient and nicer to people than they are. But then again, I only have to deal with this once a week. If it was Monday through Friday, year after year, I'd probably lose my patience, too. And honestly, I don't have to take the caterpillars out of the lab. That's a special thing I do for the guests as long as they're not being jerks.
I forgot to post one of my caterpillar pictures. We keep each species in its own aquarium with a screen lid to keep them from escaping. If we have a lot of one species, we split them into several tanks, usually based on size. Sometimes, species that use the same host plants get mixed together. For example, I was talking a picture of this huge Julia caterpillar and you can see a Zebra Longwing cat sneaked in there with it.
Quite a few of you on here raise butterflies so you know it's not all sunshine and rainbows. We get a lot of guests who think this is the "best job ever" which my boss likes to use as a hashtag when she's posting about some of the crazy stuff she ends up doing. One thing she made clear when I started was that I would have to be able to euthanize butterflies that weren't going to make it. And I have to do that most weeks. Here are a couple of Malachites that came out wrong. The one in my hand actually didn't make it out of its chrysalis, but when I went to take the picture, he fell out from the force of me moving him.
I've said this before, but I euthanize them by cutting their heads off. It's quick and better than starving to death or getting eaten alive. Sometimes, you have chrysalises that don't form right and we throw those away. You can see this Malachite chrysalis has weird grooves in it. That's not going to turn out normal.
So my main jobs are feeding the caterpillars and freeing the hostages. That's what I call releasing the butterflies. It kind of goes with my "lead me to your comrades" theme. My favorite thing to do is go out in the garden and find more caterpillars. I like to think I'm pretty good at it.
Once the caterpillars make their chrysalis, we pin them in our chrysalis boxes. The wall looks like this from inside the lab. We post little pictures of which butterfly they turn into so the guests on the other side can see. Guests are not allowed in the lab.
It's best if the caterpillar attaches to part of the plant, but sometimes they make their chrysalis on the screen of the lid or the side of the glass. Then, you have to pin the silk. This is why I get mad at caterpillars that don't make a lot of silk. (I'm looking at you White Peacocks.) This is a Malachite chrysalis I pinned yesterday. We use double-sided tape to put the styrofoam squares on top. Kids are always asking me what the "yellow dots" are and I'm like, "Have you never seen a straight pin?" I also have to emphasize that we pin the silk; if you stick a pin in a chrysalis, you will kill it. For chrysalises that don't make a lot of silk (now I'm looking at you, White butterflies), we tend to throw them in a mesh pop-up. They can get their feet in the mesh and pull themselves free so it works out. And sometimes we accidentally pull the silk loose so there's nothing to pin. Then, they also go in the mesh pop-ups.
And then we wait for the butterfly to emerge. Some guests get lucky and see it happen through the window. If I'm there, I'll bring it outside so they can see up close. We also run low on lids at times, so you can see we have double occupancy in the boxes. I wouldn't do it with Swallowtails, but most of the butterflies don't seem to mind. We generally let them chill in the lab until their wings are dry before we release them into the flight cage.
So hopefully you learned a little more about what I do and some of the downsides of butterfly raising. The important thing to remember is that butterflies only have a a success rate of about 1-2% in the wild, and unless you get some kind of disease outbreak, you're most likely going to do way better than that. I'll be back at MOSI tomorrow, so expect some more photos!
and saying WT?
In better news, all but three have pupated now.
